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Old 10-05-2017, 02:22 PM
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Nate the Great Nate the Great is offline
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October 5th, 1987, "The Naked Now"

Oh boy, here we go. I confess that there will be snarking ahead, but I did attempt to rein it down to a minimum. Suffice to say, TOS did this better, and if TNG was going to attempt it they should've moved it down the line a bit to establish the characters before mocking them.

Fiver (by Marc)
Transcript
Memory Alpha

The Episode

Note, I'm going to be using "Big T" instead of Tsiolkovsky because I would misspell it every time that I don't copy and paste, and that would make this process more painful. No disrespect to the man, really!

Furthermore, why was Riker unaffected? I know that out-of universe the creators wanted him to look good. However, I think having Crusher scan him and saying "oh, he has antibodies from his childhood bout with Alien Chicken Pox, I can modify that to save the crew" would've been better.

Captain's log, Stardate 41209.2. We are running at warp seven to rendezvous with the science vessel SS Tsiolkovsky, which has been routinely monitoring the collapse of a red super giant star into a white dwarf.

Doesn't that sound boring? A ship drops by this collapsing star, takes readings for a few days, and leaves with only the science division caring about it? At least nebulae are pretty to look at, right?

RIKER: You were right. Somebody blew the hatch. They were all sucked out into space.
DATA: Correction, sir, that's blown out.
RIKER: Thank you, Data.
DATA: A common mistake, sir.

Ugh, thanks for wasting time that could be spent on useful character development, guys. Then again, if the creators wanted useful character development they wouldn't have made this episode in the first place. I won't harp on this for every scene, but it deserved to be mentioned once.

Captain's log, supplemental. We are downloading the research information gathered on the collapsing star nearby. I am concerned at being in such close orbit, but the Tsiolkovsky's research records will no doubt predict the time of the star's final collapse.

The time of final collapse should've been known because of the Big T's prior transmissions, stars don't suddenly age or de-age unless someone like Q is hanging around, and we have no evidence of that.

CRUSHER [OC]: He doesn't have his communicator. It is very important that we find him.
TASHA: Security team alert, pick up Lieutenant La Forge. He just left Sickbay moments ago. Captain, anything further?
PICARD: Affirmative. Make it a ship-wide search, Lieutenant.

Ugh. I hate the "no commbadge=invisible to sensors" thing. It has to stop. Furthermore, the computer should have a few biometric markers (height, weight, general thermal spectrum, pressure distribution of footsteps to indicate leg length/weight distribution/etc.) on file for the Starfleet officers and Federation scientists. Furthermore, the uniform should have some counterpart of the commbadge (24th-century version of the magnetic backing plate), that will trigger when the commbadge is removed. That is, the computer notices that the commbadge is removed, notes that the officer isn't in their quarters, and uses this as a signal to focus more sensor attention on the officer.

LAFORGE: It's the Captain's voice.
WESLEY: It's pieced together from words he's used on the intercom.

Yeah, this is identity theft and some form of fraud. Wesley should be disciplined harshly for this. First duty to the truth and all that.

CRUSHER: According to our medical readouts, there's still nothing wrong with him. He looks like he's running a temperature but every instrument we have says he's not.

No, the line should be "his fever doesn't have a medical cause that I understand yet." Ugh...

PICARD: Doctor, every person on that ship over there died. Is there any chance that whatever did it is loose on my ship?
CRUSHER: If you mean a disease, sir, I'd say there's no chance of it. We used full decontamination, we examined every team member very carefully.

Ugh. You would never see McCoy claim that all possible diseases have been discovered. And if there are always going to be unknown forms of disease, the transporter filters will never be 100% foolproof unless you argue that an officer beaming back is having a new body "cloned" from their beamdown trace, with the memories updated from the person who is beaming "up" (really being killed).

RIKER: Similar conditions. They were monitoring a planet that was breaking up, not a collapsing star as in this case. But there were the same huge shifts in gravity,
PICARD: Which somehow resulted in complex strings of water molecules which acquired carbon from the body and acted on the brain like alcohol. Data, download this information to Medical immediately.
DATA: Aye, sir. Downloading.

Ugh. Data can't hold everything in his head, but all Starfleet mission logs should be among them. And if he's going to get pedantic about "blown out" and "sucked out", I'm going to call him on using "downloading" instead of "uploading" (even though "transferring" would be even more accurate).

PICARD: Thank you, Counsellor. Number One, it seems our Security Chief has the equivalent of a snootful.
DATA: Inquiry, sir. Snootful?
PICARD: Forget it.


This joke got old fast. If Data can't hold all Starfleet mission logs or a complete dictionary/thesaurus/slang vocabulary list in his head, what's he using all of that space for? Catfood recipes?

DATA: Captain, another forty-one minutes will see the information from the Tsiolkovsky downloaded to us.
PICARD: Why so slow?
DATA: Slow, sir? The Tsiolkovsky has been eight months in accumulating it.

Eight months? Eight months looking at a star? An automated sensor drone could do that! I'm surprised the crew of the Big T needed this polywater junk, just cabin fever would make them go bonkers. And the silliest thing is, we don't need to imply massive amounts of data to prolong the episode, just say "interference from the star is slowing down the transmission and much of it must be repeated to fill in holes"!

DATA: If you prick me, do I not leak?

According to First Contact, no you don't, Data.

TASHA: Data. I'm only going to tell you this just once. It never happened.

How did Picard find out about this, anyway?

The Fiver

La Forge: (sobbing) Oh, Tasha! I wish I could be Chief Engineer!
Yar: But Geordi, we already have a Chief Engineer.
La Forge: Really? Who?
Yar: Well, this week it's...uh...gee, let me think here for a second....

Why wasn't a Chief Engineer part of the main cast from Day One?

Worf: Captain, there are reports of hanky-panky all over the ship.
Picard: That's strange. When this happened on the old Enterprise, the crew was much less...er, enterprising.
Worf: Perhaps their log entries were made under different censorship standards than ours.
Picard: What? You mean that all this is being recorded?

Yeah, Picard. And I look forward to the hearing where you defend making Wesley an Acting Ensign after he toyed around with the ship.

YouTube

* Crusher hits on Picard. Wait for the end when Worf watches them leave the ready room with Crusher's uniform not zipped up all the way.
* A promo clip that makes the episode sound way better than it is.
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